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The song was an extended production number in the 20th Century Fox film Sun Valley Serenade. The Glenn Miller recording, RCA Bluebird B-11230-B, became the #1 song across the United States on December 7, 1941, and remained as #1 for nine weeks on the Billboard Best Sellers chart.[2][3][4] The flip side of the single was "I Know Why (And So Do You)", which was the A side.

The song opens up with the band, sounding like a train rolling out of the station, complete with the trumpets and trombones imitating a train whistle ("WHOO WHOO"), before the instrumental portion comes in playing two parts of the main melody. This is followed by the vocal introduction of four lines before the main part of the song is heard.

The main song opens with a dialog between a passenger and a shoeshine boy:

"Pardon me, boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?"

"Track 29!"

"Boy, you can give me a shine."

After the entire song is sung, the band plays two parts of the main melody as an instrumental, with the instruments impersonating the "WHOO WHOO" of the train as the song ends.

The 78-rpm was recorded on May 7, 1941, for RCA Victor's Bluebird label and became the first to be certified a gold disc on February 10, 1942, for 1,200,000 sales. The transcription of this award ceremony can be heard on the first of three volumes of RCA's "Legendary Performer" compilations released by RCA in the 1970s. In the early 1990s a two-channel recording of a portion of the Sun Valley Serenadesoundtrack was discovered, allowing reconstruction of a true-stereo version of the film performance.

"Chattanooga Choo Choo, run it down again" – Glenn Miller (right) and his orchestra perform the song in Sun Valley Serenade. Tex Beneke is to the left of Miller

The composition was nominated for an Academy Award in 1941 for Best Song from a movie. The song achieved its success that year even though it could not be heard on network radio for much of 1941 due to the ASCAP boycott.[5]

In 1996, the 1941 recording of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

In the 1970s, the tune was used in the UK on an advert for Toffee Crisp candy bars, starting with "Pardon me, boy, is that a Toffee Crisp you chew chew," and ending with the final punch line "Chew chew Toffee crisp, and you'll go far."

A cover by Steve Lucky & The Rhumba Bums was featured in the 2005 film Be Cool.

The tune was adopted twice for German songs. Both songs deal with trains, and both songs start with (different) translations of "pardon me".

The first was created and performed in 1947 by the German pop singer Bully Buhlan (Zug nach Kötzschenbroda). The lyrics are humorously describing the bother of a train ride out of post-war Berlin: no guarantee to arrive at a destination due to coal shortage, passengers traveling on coach buffers, steps and roofs, and never-ending trip interruptions including a night stop for delousing.

The second, Sonderzug nach Pankow, created by the German rock musician Udo Lindenberg in 1983 became very popular and had various political implications. Lindenberg was a West German singer and songwriter with a suitable fan community in East Germany.[9] He had applied for years to tour the GDR but was rejected several times. [9] The 1983 cover version of Chattanooga Choo Choo was directly asking the GDR's Chairman of the Council of State Erich Honecker for permission to hold a concert in the Palace of the Republic (Berlin). [9] The song was released on February 2, 1983, and was repeatedly featured in the West as well in the East. The song itself and the Glenn Miller original were temporarily interdicted in the GDR.[9] Nevertheless, Lindenberg finally succeeded in getting an invitation to the GDR rock festival Rock for Peace on October 25, 1983, on the condition that Lindenberg would not play Sonderzug nach Pankow at the concert. Honecker, a former brass band drummer of Rotfrontkämpferbund, and Lindenberg exchanged presents in form of a leather jacket and a metal shawm in 1987.[10] Lindenberg's success at passing the Inner German border peacefully with a humorous song gave him celebrity status as well as a positive political acknowledgement in both West and East Germany. [9]

Lindenberg's version was adapted by Dutch singer Willem Duyn as De Eerste Trein Naar Zandvoort ("First train to Zandvoort") chronicling chaos and mayhem on the first seaside train (which he chooses to miss). It was a hit in the summer of 1983. Barry Manilow performed the song "Singin With The Big Bands" with Chattanooga Choo Choo's tune in 1994.

In October 1944, a new recording by Captain Glenn Miller and the Army Air Forces Training Command Orchestra featuring Sgt. Ray McKinley and The Crew Chiefs on vocals was released as a V-Disc by the U.S. War Department, one of a series of recordings sent free by the U.S. War Department to overseas military personnel during World War II. Its designation was V-Disc 281A. The recording was also released as a Navy V-Disc as 61A.

Trains are on permanent display at the Terminal Station, in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Today, trains have a pride of place in Chattanooga's former Terminal Station. Once owned and operated by the Southern Railway, the station was saved from demolition after the withdrawal of passenger rail service in the early 1970s, and it is now part of a 30-acre (12-hectare) resort complex, including the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel, and numerous historical railway exhibits. Hotel guests can stay in half of a restored passenger railway car. Dining at the complex includes the Gardens restaurant in the Terminal Station itself, The Station House (which is housed in a former baggage storage room and known for its singing waitstaff) and the "Dinner in the Diner" which is housed in a restored 1941 Class A dining car. The music venue "Track29" is also on the grounds of the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel in the building that formerly housed the city's only ice rink at the back of the property. The city's other historic station, Union Station, parts of which predated the Civil War, was demolished in 1973; the site is now an office building formerly housing the corporate offices of the Krystal restaurant chain (the restaurant chain offices have since relocated to Atlanta, Georgia). In addition to the railroad exhibits at "the Choo Choo", there are further exhibits at Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, in east Chattanooga.

Woody Herman released a parody of the song in 1942 as "Ooch Ooch a Goon Attach (Backward Song) (Yad O Esor)" as a Decca 78 single, 18364-B, written by Sbocaj Yor, or Roy Jacobs.

The opening line of the song was also parodied in the movie Young Frankenstein. Fredrick Frankenstein arrives at a rail depot and asks "Pardon me, boy; is this the Transylvania Station?" The young shoeshine boy replies "Ja! Ja! Track tventy-nine!"

In the episode "Debra at the Lodge" of the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond one of the men at the lodge (Max) asks Debra if she knows the "Chattanooga Choo Choo," to which she answers "'Pardon me boys?'"

In the episode "Moo-Ma and Moo-Pa" of the comedy series Black Books, Manny's father has a habit of singing the song.

There is a play on words joke connected to this song...Roy Rogers gets a brand new pair of cowboy boots from his lovely wife, Dale Evans. He leaves them out on the porch of his ranch house and, in the morning, discovers they’ve been gnawed by a mountain lion. Roy grabs a rifle and his horse and goes out to kill the varmint. Three hours later Roy’s back with a dead mountain lion tied across his saddle. Dale Evans, his wife, goes up to him and says, ‘Pardon me, Roy. Is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?’